MS British Library Cotton Julius A. i.

Drawing of an armed knight, wearing mail and a helm, holding up in both hands a tree trunk with
which
he is preparing to strike a lion rampant. The knight's surcoat has the arms: a fess checky.

The broken pieces of a sword lie under the knight's feet. From the upper left hand corner
descends a
hand holding a shield displaying the knight's arms; the descending hand's arm is under a sleeve
decorated with fleurs de lys, and fleurs de lys also decorate the border that frames the whole
scene.

The inscription below is largely lost and it is only possible to read: "...corum cum hac
Figura picta
incoloribus facta ...ward qui Londoniis
modo ...de Ramsey." The words "...ward" and "de" are as copied
by Francis Douce (d. 1834) in his copy of Planta's Catalogue (now in the Bodleian
Library,
Douce P. subt. 33).

The drawing illustrates the incident in which the Stewart family allegedly gained the arms of
argent a
lion gules debruised by a ragged staff, when Andrew Stewart slew the lion of Balliol with a
ragged staff
and in return received from Charles VI, king of France, the right to bear the lion and staff as
an
augmentation of honour on the Stewart arms. This claim seems first to have been made by Robert
Steward, the last prior and first dean of Ely (d. 1557), and to have been allowed in a grant of
arms to
him by Thomas Wriothesley, Garter king of arms, 14 Sept. 1520 (transcribed in BL, Add. MS
15644, f.
2r-v).

ORIGIN:

DATING: The knight's armour would suggest a mid 13th-century date; but the lettering below is in the
style of a
later date. Presumably this version of the scene was executed in the 16th century.

PROVENANCE:

CODICOLOGY:

COPIES:

Other versions of the same picture are in e.g. Augustine Stywarde's cartulary, BL Add.
MS

15644, ff.
60v and 72r (c. 1567), a Stewart pedigree-roll, partly dated 1557,
that in 1829 belonged to Nathaniel Lee-Acton of Bramford Hall, near Ipswich (engraved in
Archaeologia, xxiii, p. 388), and in a late 16th-century stained glass window (engraved
as the
frontispiece to Round's Studies in Peerage and Family History).

British Heraldry, from its Origins to c. 1800, comp. and ed. R. Marks and Ann Payne,
exhibn.
cat. (London: British Museum and British Library, 1978), p. 91, no. 143.

EXHIBITED:

AUTHOR: Dr Nigel RamsayDATE: 22-7-98SORTCODE: A-COTJUL-A1p1

MS British Library Cotton Julius A. i.

ARTICLE: Planta's art. 4

FOLIATION: ff. 51-62

CONTENT:

Fragment of a Brut chronicle of the reign of Edward II beginning in 1307 and ending
abruptly
in the narrative of 1322. It is followed by transcripts of: the indictment of Hugh Despencer
(ff. 54-56);
the renunciation of homage by Sir William Trussel (f. 57); the statute against the Despencers
(ff. 57-
59v); the text of the coronation office of Edward III (ff. 60-62); and two letters
to Queen
Isabella, the second, dated 30 June 1321 warning her of a lepers' conspiracy in France (ff.
62-63;
the first letter is also datable to 1321, according to Richardson and Sayles "Early
Coronation
Records. Supplementary Notes", p. 146).

Richardson and Sayles pointed out that the texts on ff. 54-63 "form no part of the
[Brut]
chronicle", but are simply "documents thought worth transcribing on the blank leaves of
the last
quire on which the chronicle was written" ["Early Coronation Records. Supplementary
Notes", p. 146].

M.V. Clarke suggested that the chronicle "may have been written" in Pipewell abbey (co.
Northants.) ["Committees of Estates and the Deposition of Edward II", p. 44;
Representation
and Consent, p. 193].

Anglo-Norman.

ORIGIN:

DATING: Written in a hand of the first half of the 14th century.

PROVENANCE:

T.D. Hardy noted [P.R.O., PRO 37/75, f. 5] that the Brut chronicle is seemingly a
fragment of
College of Arms, MS Arundel 31.

Cox, "The Old English Dicts of Cato", Anglia, xc (1972), pp.1-5, 17-42.

M. Lapidge, "The Study of Latin Texts in Late Anglo-Saxon England. 1. The Evidence of Latin
Glosses", in Latin and the Vernacular Languages in Early Medieval England, ed.
Nicholas P. Brooks (Leicester, 1982), pp. 99-140, at 102-5.

Art. 3 was bought from George Rookeby by Roger Dodsworth; Dodsworth states in a transcript of
it
that he made (now Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College, MS 793/828) that in 1621 he gave the
original MS to Sir Robert Cotton [M.R. James, Supplement to the Catalogue of Manuscripts in
the
Library of Gonville and Caius College (Cambridge, 1914), pp. 41-2]. Smith states that
Dodsworth
gave the Man Chronicle in 1620.

CODICOLOGY:

COPIES:

ILLUSTRATED:

PRINTED:

LITERATURE:

EXHIBITED:

AUTHOR: Dr Nigel RamsayDATE: 22-7-98SORTCODE: A-COTJUL-A7

MS British Library Cotton Julius A. vii.

ARTICLE: Part of Smith's art. 10; Planta's art. 10.

FOLIATION: ff. 88v-90r (Planta's ff. 86v-88r)

CONTENT:

De mutatione mala Ordinis Cistercii, poem about the decay of the Cistercian order.

Begins: Dulcis ordo Cistercii dudum candens ut lilii.

ORIGIN: Probably composed in the environs of London, in about the late 13th century (Meyer).

MS British Library Cotton Julius A. viii.

ARTICLE:

FOLIATION:

CONTENT:

Thomas Otterbourne, Chronicle of the kings of England from Brutus to King Edward III, ending in
1359.

According to T.D. Hardy, it is based chiefly on William of Malmesbury and then Higden and the
Historia Anglicana of Walsingham; Otterbourne occasionally adds to the last of these.
"He
seems to have [had] before him either the Cottonian MS Nero A. vi or the materials from which
that
was compiled" [T.D. Hardy, MS Continuation of his Descriptive Cat., P.R.O., PRO
37/77,
f. 133].

Kingsford suggested that "from certain characteristics of his Chronicle, [Otterbourne]
appears, as his
name implies, to have been of northern origin. He may possibly be identical with the Thomas
Otterbourne who became rector of Chingford [co. Essex] in 1393" [English Historical
Literature
in the Fifteenth Century, p. 21].

S.D. Lloyd, "Crusader Knights and the Land Market in the Thirteenth Century", in
Thirteenth Century England, ii, Proceeding of the Newcastle upon Tyne Conference,
1987,
ed. P.R. Coss and S.D. Lloyd (Woodbridge, 1988), pp. 119-36, at 121-4.

EXHIBITED:

AUTHOR: Dr Nigel RamsayDATE: 22-7-98SORTCODE: A-COTJUL-A9p7

MS British Library Cotton Julius A. x.

ARTICLE: Smith's, Planta's art. 2

FOLIATION: ff. 44-175 (misbound from Wanley's time until 1858, when order corrected by Madden)

CONTENT:

Martyrology.

Written around the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries (Ker), in four hands. There are
12th-century
alterations to the text on ff. 153v, 159.

Incomplete; wants quires at beginning and end and after ff. 59 and 113.